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Bookish Quotes

"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce
by the day."

[Working on my backlog of to-be-journaled books; I read this one almost two months ago!]

"Lite" yes, but cute, beginning with the foreword: "After Gutenberg, millions of books on all subjects were published, some of them highly influential, 'great,' or at least very long. This in turn led to eyestrain, paper cuts, deforestation, and adult reading groups." Some of the entries that tickled me the most:

Vengeance! Black blood! Aye! Doubloons to him that harpoons the Greenpeace dinghy.

Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis, Principia Mathematica

Cherry blossoms fall with Force equal to Mass times Acceleration.

And, my very favorite of all (caution: contains spoiler!):

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Snow-drops hang like tears. Shy, sweet, saintly Beth has died. One down, three to go.

There are many others that I enjoyed, including the spectacular and many-footnoted entry for Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There's Balzac, and Nabakov, and Kafka, and George Bernard Shaw (the entry for Saint Joan includes a seriously groan-worthy pun, as do several of the other items). I'm seriously tempted to look up my BC-registered copies of the titles lampooned herein and post the appropriate haiku as part of my journal entry!

Controlled release: I handed this to BCer bookczuk today in Cambridge, where I had the pleasure of meeting her and her family. (Had a wonderful time, though it went by too quickly... I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip, and I'll see you in Charleston in 2007, if not before then!)

We had an absolutely marvelous evening reading Haiku to each other! TheSIL did a fantastic reading of many of my favorites, including the above mentioned LMA/Little Women. But our hands down favorite was the Odyssey. Unfortunately, Bumma has obsconded withthe book so I can't quote it here. Give me time. With three bookcrossers in this household, the haiku should turn up *somewhere*!

caught the book from bookczuk and read it out loud at the dinner table last night, having laughed myself silly reading it while trying to set the table. It is hysterical. Reading out "Little Women" was almost impossible. I was laughing too hard. A Bumma fav: The Odyssey

What a lovely little book! It had me giggling repeatedly! It's amazing how much wit can fit in a few syllables. I have many favorite Haikus from this book, but I'll write the ones on Greek writers and thinkers because I feel pretty patriotic right now. :-P

Homer - The Iliad Sing, Goddess, of how brooding Achilles' mood swings caused him to act out